Unknown - you are wasting your time . . .

 Unknown - I moderate all the comments on this blog, so yours are all in the bin forever . . .

Blackthorn in full bloom beside the narrow gauge railway line which runs from Aberystwyth up to Devil's Bridge.

And to my friends - I've had a busy day today, visiting Jon and Rosie and giving him some moral support.  Rosie's been ill all week with a high temperature and Tam back at work today, so I went to give cuddles to Rosie and give worried Jon a break.  Last Friday, when she must have been coming down with this, she was unconsolable with Jon and Tam had to come home from work as Rosie wouldn't settle or sleep.  She was better today and even had a bottle (breast milk) for the first time and lots of little sips of water from her cup with a straw.

I popped into Charlie's on the way there and found a rose support with blackbirds on.  It opens on two sides so it was what I wanted to encircle a rose which was already becoming wayward.  Photos above and below - the obligatory layby photos.

I have decided to abandon the Heirloom pattern for that quilt.  I just don't have the experience for it and quiltmaking is supposed to be a pleasure after all.  I am, however, taking an element from it to make up into a block which I found when browsing old quilting magazines last night. I will share it when the first block has been tried out.   

There were golden ribbons of gorse hedgerows today - so beautiful. The best home made wine I have ever had was Gorse Wine - it was like liquid sunshine. When I tried making it though, it was chucked!  

Celendines and violets on my walk to/from the garage again yesterday.

This was by a garden pond edge. Like Lords and Ladies but bright lemon yellow.  Unusual. Still Arum maculatum though, but a domesticated version.

Tomorrow I'm out early and back early as my new computer is being delivered.

The Hell and Damnation Quilt!

Photo of our house for Debby,and below, the design of the William Morris (Heritage) quilt.  Debby -  that is the weekend  after we moved in, 4 yrs ago.  I still hate that chocolate brown paint.  This is the year to change it to something brighter.  There is an awful lot more in pots and planted there now.   Below, a couple of years later, in summer, taken from up on the bank.

Now I can't find these photos again. This computer's driving me nuts!

 

 

As for this blardy quilt, it's nearly putting me off quilting for life. Whoever planned it, has used such ridiculous measurements and once again, when I HAVE finished a block, it is 11 1/2" or 113/4" and not 12".  I worked on the easier block last night and this morning (this is the four patch corners/centre one), concentrated hard, cut and sewed accurately, but no . . . it's still too small.  Morning's Minion kindly worked and and shared her measurements for the other block, but it is a 9" block and I don't know how to scale it up.  I had planned to go and lay it all at the feet of Alex (patchwork teacher) today, but the class wasn't being held.

Below, note points cut off on first practice block and the blocks around the 4-patch blocks are wrongly placed as they should form a star. These will end up as cushion covers.  I sewed these weeks ago now.

It's very windy today, so I haven't gardened either, but I DID go to the Tip with a big boot load of rubbish, and drove on to the small garden centre near X-gates, looking for rose supports, but nothing doing and so I just bought two half price terracotta pots and a red Saxifrage.

After lunch I fell asleep for the length of 2 Time Team programmes.  Not enough water drunken today, plus a carby lunch, and I woke at 4.50 a.m. and didn't sleep after that.  Now I feel groggy.

Work in the garden has gone well, though I can't share photos as they've not been loaded.  I discovered that this is because  the port on the left side has now died and must have been dodgy when loading the holiday ones.  I will try again with the new computer.

I've nearly finished edging and weeding the gravel arc  by the Rhododendrons, and planted the Armeria (Sea Thrift) there.  I've just about finished weeding and de-leafing the main bed and will plant the new rose tomorrow. I'm going to put the Hollyhocks in the new and one older terracotta pot out in a little group in the yard, where they will appreciate the sun.

Then I shall get my stitch ripper out . . .

This will be an expensive week - and Disserth Church

 Well, the car just about limped down to the garage this morning, 2nd gear all the way as it wasn't having any in 3rd gear and 1st/2nd v. dodgy.   I said I needed it back today, but was told there are no guarantees (as in something else might need doing).  Best part of £500 going out there . . . 

A pretty cottage on the walk home from the garage this morning.  Pretty cherry blossom too.

I have also made an executive decision about my computer.  It's about 8+ years or so old now, and support for Microsoft 10 runs out this year.  Several keys and the space bar are sticking despite running repairs, and the sound system has had it.  As has whatever runs the video call system as I have poor sound, and no camera on that!  Plus the main port I use on the left has copped out. I use my laptop a lot, so time to invest in a new one that WORKS! I am not convinced that the holiday photos problem was a corrupt SD disc either.  So now waiting to hear from Danny/Tam which one to go for.  Another Lenovo I reckon.

The pretty row of cottages I passed on my short cut.

The 2nd church we visited on Saturday was at Disserth.  HERE is a link to when Keith and I went there in 2022. I will trust you all to visit that for the words, and I'll just add a couple more photos on here.  Typing with a stuck space bar is driving me mad!

The venerable Parish Chest.

A very plain Norman Font.

Right, back to try my hand at cutting out a block for the Hell and Damnation Quilt now - aka the William Morris Heritage Quilt. Many many thanks to Morning's Minion, who has sketched out the layout and measurements for me.   Oh, and the girls and I are having a return Birthday Visit (mine) to Calico Kate's wonderful patchwork shop in Lampeter next month, and to Jen Jones' 2025 Quilt Exhibition "As Time Goes By".

Church bothering en masse - St John Divine, Cwmbach

Yesterday was a welcome day out - having been tied to the locale for the last fortnight as the car is off the road, and my friend P gave me a lift to and from town so I didn't have to walk. The trip had been organized by a lady in our town History group, and we were to visit 3 churches, have lunch at the Elan Valley visitor's centre, and come home via Cors-y-Llyn bog.

This is the Church of St John Divine, at Cwmbach, between Builth and Newbridge-on-Wye.  It has been closed for the past five years because of problems with the bells and the back chimney, which rendered it dangerous.  Keith and I stopped to check this one out a couple of years ago, but it was shut then.  The bells(which came from Switzerland, as did the original ones) have now been replaced.
 

It was sponsored by a local philanthropist, Miss Clara Thomas of Llywn Madoc, Breconshire and nearby Pencarrig.  Our host told us that the church was built in memory of Miss Thomas's mother (also named Clara) who died in 1877, and it apparently cost £12,000 to build in 1887, and has definite Italianate influence, because Miss Thomas had visited Italy many times. Apparently the small carved heads inside and out of the church showed this Italian influence, as did the use of Italian marble inside.  The company of J B Fowler of Brecon undertook the construction and the stained glass was by Burlison and Grylls.

The beautiful outer wrought iron door was donated by a friend, and I loved these strapwork hinges on the wooden door.

Sorry this isn't very legible, but says that the iron gates were wrought in Italy.

Stained glass windows in the porch.  Stained glass by Burlison and Grylls. There was a similar window opposite.

Beautifully inlaid with squares of Italian marble, this font gives a design nod to Norman times, with the multiple legs.  I don't think I've ever seen one with inlays like this.

This is the huge and detailed glass of the West window.

A memorial window on the North wall of the church.

Above and below, the altar and the absolutely lovely  carved marble rerados and the gold and lilies Alleluja plaque, made - as you will recognize from recent posts of mine - as a mosaic.

These stained glass memorial windows had a much bolder design style and were added later. The bottom one is 1905.

                   

Our host also told us that the benefactress would spend the winter in one house (Pencarrig) and then transport all the livestock and necessities (including her grand piano on a gambo - a sort of cart) across the rough lanes to her other property, Llywn Madoc, over the Breconshire border, for the summer. If you do a search on these properties you will find photos of how they look now.  Lovely houses.

Then it was onto the next church, Disserth, which Keith and I had first visited when we moved here.

Billy Blue Eyes - the church has now been opened for services again, but you would probably have to turn up on the day when it was holding the service to see inside.

Final holiday roundup - three amazing desert castles

 

This caravanserai dates to the 7th C.  It was a resting place for traders and had something like 65 bedrooms.  There had been a fountain in the central courtyard, and in one room was the large round base for what had been a bread oven.  It was hard to imagine it thronging with people and animals now.

As you can see, it had been much restored.

The desert - the views just went on and on.

Wonderful carvings had survived.

"Just as our coach arrived at Quseir 'Amra, I noticed a bird taking off from a low shrub.  It was a HOOPOE!!!  It was too speedy for a photo, as was the 2nd one I saw shortly afterwards.  Top of my lifetime "wants" on my birding list!  Since I was about 12 in fact, as I remember reading Monica Edwards' book "The Summer of the Great Secret" which as a bout a Hoopoe spending the summer at the castle on Romney Marsh in Kent, and they were trying to keep its presence secret."

This is Quseir 'Amra, a Royal Hunting Lodge, and again 7th C. These desert castles were created by the Umayyad lords.  From the outside, it didn't look too impressive, although it had a separate bath-house/sauna built, and you can just see the water windmill which bucket-lifted water up from a 40 foot deep cistern.

Hunting dogs.

From my journal: "Inside, oh my goodness, ancient 7th C fresco's, though sadly some were very damaged because they offended those who came after - Bedouins who used this as a dwelling.  As this had been a hunting palace, there were clearly leisure pursuits also available and several walls/ceilings had pictures of a sexual nature which had been appropriately damaged later.  There were many other different paintings - people at work, hunting scenes, someone playing a lute, the ever-present Tree of Life and a lovely frieze of desert animals.  I loved the painting of a Centaur, which had been introduced from other influences (Greek mythology)."

Of course, the photo of the centaur is one of the ones which is still on the camera.

Journal: "THEN - OH MY GOODNESS - Al-Azraq Castle, built by the Romans and used ever since.  This final Crusader Castle was the very one where Lawrence of Arabia discussed the Sykes-Picot agreement in 1916. " Wikipedia says: 'The Sykes-Pico Agreement was a 1916 secret treaty between the United Kingdom and France, with assent from Russia and Italy, to define their mutually agreed spheres of influence and control in an eventual partition of the Ottoman Empire.'

Journal entry "The actual castle was built by the Romans.  The double front door was made from two slabs of stone weighing 1000 g, and had pivots on their outer edges (now greased by diesel oil - it would have been olive oil in the past). There was another elsewhere - a single door even heavier at around 4,000 Kg."

Here I am, stood in the very room where Lawrence of Arabia and Prince Faisal had their talks.  The blackened stones above my head were from later Bedouin fires.  The sense of history here was breathtaking.

The very heavy door!

Gabby goes to the shops!!  Prices were very much cheaper here than in the cities or the stop-offs the coach tour used.

Then across the desert again . . .

To the Dead Sea.  That's Israel on the far shore.  I just had a paddle, but most of the folk on our coach floated (it is SO salty, something like 40% saline, you can only float - and you don't want to splash it in your eyes!)  Afterwards, it's obligatory to cover yourself in the mud, which is good for the skin, and then you can have a beach shower to get off the worst before going back to the showers which were part of the hotel complex we had lunch at.  You could hire a towel.

I'll put a couple of museum photos up tomorrow.  Now it's gardening time again.